The Alters is one of those games that quickly caught my interest. It was a survival game that has a lot in common with one of my favorite movies of all time – The Martian – that required a specialized team of “alternates”. Literally having to create others “you’s” to save yourself from certain death. (I’d like to see Matt Damon pull off that escape plan.)
I didn’t know it at the time, but this quote from the opening dialogue for ‘The Alters’ announcement trailer sums up everything you need to know about the upcoming survival management game.
“… The decisions you regret and see the consequences of those choices firsthand?”
I will come to know the true meaning of this quote while playing the Steam demo for the game. All I can say is that I am more excited for the game’s release later this year.
Players take control of Jan Dolski, a builder looking for a fresh start as part of Project Dolly. He and his crew were initially sent to a faraway planet with the hope of finding a mysterious substance called Rapidium. Unfortunately for Jan, tragedy strikes, and he becomes the expedition’s sole survivor.
Jan now has to do everything within his power to survive this ordeal: gathering resources for item creation and food, getting the mobile research base up and running to avoid the planet’s deadly sunrise, and convincing the corporation that he is worth rescuing.
So, there’s a time element at play here. The situation requires you to get everything you need for your journey within 5 days. This is where I start to see hints of Harvest Moon. A day starts with you waking up early. All the “tasks” that you do throughout the day – be it collecting resources or creating stuff inside the base – will require energy. If you faint before sleeping in a bed, you will wake up later than usual. It’s a pretty nice system. I’m not sure how well it’ll work out when all the Alters are active but that’s a problem for another time.
Your first encounter with Rapidium was in a cave not too far from the base. At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at until Jan started to react. I honestly thought my GPU died or something. But after a few confusing moments, I had found the substance we were supposed to look for.
Everything hinges on this miracle element. If it weren’t for this stuff, I’m 100% certain Jan would be written off as another tragic accident victim. But in this case, he has something that the higher-ups want, and that may be enough to make him a priority.
After a little more collecting, we are introduced to the game’s take on base building. You see, that cluster of shapes attached to the huge wheel are pre-fab units that are essential for progress. The units can moved around as you see fit through means only a space wizard knows. I was asked to create a kitchen, a workshop, and a bio lab for the demo. In the full game, I suspect there will be more rooms like hydroponics and advanced R&D. There’s also space to expand the platform but that wasn’t included in the demo.
My introduction to the Alter tech was an interesting one. I had to prove that the Rapidium on board was legit. The voice on the other side of the communicator told us to test it out in the lab. The result of this little experiment was a sheep that Jan named, Dolly. How fitting. This was enough to convince the higher-ups that Jan was worth saving.
The most surprising part of the demo – and the part that excites me the most – is the branching paths system the devs have implemented. I had assumed that the Alters was going to implement a tried and tested system wherein you create Alters and they will do the tasks you assign them. But that’s only the half of it.
An incident involving the base’s engine provided the opportunity to walk us through the process of creating the ‘Alters’. It was decided that since Jan was incapable of fixing it with his current skill set, he had to bring in someone with the right skill set. Jan had created another Jan using a bit of DNA and Rapidium. When this scene played out, I somewhat had the feeling that it was all going to go wrong someway, somehow. This thought alone got me excited to play the main game.
The first conversation with this new Jan was awkward, to say the least. The game wants it to be abundantly clear that each Jan is shaped by the various life choices he has made in alternate timelines. Whether or not it is “real” is irrelevant. It is real to the person that’s standing right in front of you.
Getting to know machine specialist Jan was tricky. I was supposed to get to know him and understand what he was going through but my responses came off as dismissive and uncaring. I was trying to force him to see things my way when I was supposed to get where they were coming from. Each Alter has his own ambitions, goals, and fears. I let the situation take precedence over anything else. That was my mistake.
It soon became clear that the best way moving forward was to get to know the Alters with the hope that they would offer their assistance for the sake of the mission. It’s going to be a tough ask but I like how it is implemented in this game. The Alters have a timeline of events that’s uniquely their own. I had to read the events to make judgment calls that positively impacted our connection. It took some time but I was able to convince other Jan to join me for dinner over a dish their mom used to make. That was the key to establishing good relations moving forward.
And that’s the end of the demo.
The Alters demo itself isn’t perfect. There’s plenty of visual jank and it’s still rough in more than a few places. But it served its purpose in showing us how the game truly plays. And I think it greatly succeeded in that regard. I’m far more excited about the game than ever and I can’t wait to see it again when it fully launches later this year.
